Essay On Race And Difference

For centuries, race has existed as a sensitive topic in the United States of America. The issue of race and difference is deeply rooted in the American society. The standard way of thinking about race has it that it primarily determines an individual’s social, economic and political status. Exposure to tiny details unrelated to race proves that people unconsciously rely heavily on racial identity while making a judgment. Various literary authors such as Toni Morrison have represented the issue of race and difference in their works. In “Playing with Difference,” Lucille Fultz uses various stories by Morrison to show that individuals socially and culturally construct race. This essay focuses on Fultz’ point of view of race construction by readers

Bonaventure, the children's shelter where Twyla and Roberta, the protagonists, resided. This short description of her economic status confirms to readers that she is a struggling woman belonging to the lower working class. Moreover, she gets depicted as very old, mute and physically deformed as Twyla describes her legs as "parentheses"(Fultz, 23). Apart from her economic and physical description, nothing gets however stated about her race. Years later, Roberta and Twyla are not even sure about her race. Roberta admits that she thought Maggie was black but Twyla disagrees. Fultz explains that readers struggle to identify Maggie's race based on these characteristics even though her race is not of much significance in the story. Citing Elizabeth Abel, Fultz states that some readers such as Abel get frustrated in an attempt to “sort out who is black and who is white in “Recitatif” and concedes that the text ‘forces us to construct racial categories from highly ambiguous social clues”’ (23). Readers try hard to make out Maggie’s race regarding how she gets described and how she behaves in the story when the real issue that should get addressed is how cruelly she gets treated by other characters because she is physically